Saturday, October 29, 2011

Occupy Abulafia

The dungeon was originally a vast city of snake-people but has been forgotten by most civilized races for eons. It was rediscovered due to the recent death of the medusa responsible for the statues from which the surrounding stone was quarried. Near the North entrance, a werejaguar of unusual intelligence suspects it may contain a female druid (-Lvl 5-) named Nixie Gott, possessor of an important book & rumored to possess a whetstone of unusual properties--one of particular interest--and so has dispatched hyena-like humanoids into the complex. They communicate via burning things.

Meanwhile, a group of tiny hyena-like humanoids who entered through a secret door to the North suspects it may contain a jade that they value. Their leader is said to be strangely cloned and is also a hulking bruiser with dangerous pets--a swarm of bats that appear to obey his/her every whim. They roams the halls looking for sustenance. They're also far faster than the typical members of their species. This group uses a powerful but barely-mobile psionic medium to spy on the other group of intruders.

(In recent weeks, the two factions have begun to notice each other in the halls.)

Unbeknownst to either side, a giant mantis--a superevolved, hyperintelligent, one--lives deep within, inside a network of tunnels leading eventually to a crown which it prizes beyond all things.

It has constructed traps around its lair--for example, magical sensors connected up to rotary saw blades --but also four stranger traps, informed by its bizarre alien intelligence, which cause intruders to be destroyed by their own depravity. It can avoid the traps easily because of its unique abilities.

The other factions have made about four traps each as well, but they are cruder, since they've been recently and hastily thrown together.

In addition, there are many hazards that are the legacy of the dungeon's original inhabitants. No-one has yet discovered the secret passage within the garbage pile on the fourth level.

Due to the subtle influence of a magic egg (below the fireplace on level two) with a powerful curse on it, nearly all of the inhabitants have become increasingly delusional and some have gained additional bizarre physical and mental deformities. Some have become obsessed with earthquakes for reasons unknown.

Perhaps the most disturbing room in the dungeon is the so-called "panic chamber" which the intelligent creatures in the dungeon fear above all else. However, beyond it there is a male author who hails from the homeland of one of your PCs and may aid him/her, though s/he covets the PCs' (whatever they have that's unusual) and is repulsed by the sight of every stairway s/he sees in the dungeon (sheesh, artists are so sensitive).

The dungeon's architecture resembles an overgrown prison, however every mirror in it is made of electrum and obsidian.

In addition to these things, it is said by some that, hidden deep within the complex, where no mortal has been in eons is the Crown of The Long Cold and a last enclave of Ancient Men, sleeping in suspended animation for thousands of years, ready to be awakened.__________

Sick of dungeons? Here's another adventure...

The Emerald Canyon

The PCs have heard that if they safely transport--A female warrior (-Lvl 7-) (named Galiana)--soon to be wed to a powerful saboteur & rumored to be the lover of a powerful jester--they will become rich. The bride-to-be must be moved from an inn: The Mug and King, (famous for its bacon-wrapped halibut) to a brutal temple of a primordial faith based on the worship of a god associated with daggers.

The vast battleground also includes a treant fed on the blood of the ancient dead and a man-headed centipede._____________________

Anyway as you maybe figured out I've been fucking around with Abulafia some more.

This post's purpose is threefold:

1-to tell you it's neat

2-to recommend you make some generators or add some depth or content to existing ones,

3-to be like 'I smear liquid plastic on paper and put my dick in people for money and even I figured out how to do this so it can't be that hard'

Here are the generators I've made so far and some things you could do to/with them:

Dungeon Overview: This is probably the slickest and most complete. And, for me at least, it produces stuff pretty useful right outta the box. If I was you and I liked dungeons, I'd clone it and modify it into a version that fit the kind of stuff in your world.Fantasy Assignment: This is like rumors and jobs basically. It's very uneven. It basically goes Verb Objective Location. The objectives are fairly decent since Abulafia already had a huge library of objects and monsters and NPCs to draw on and the verbs are ok but hardly cover every possible assignment or kind of assignment yet. The locations are the most uneven part--they come from...

...this Fantasy Adventure Location generator: there are like 50 kinds of locations, some with lots of detail for the DM (like the fortresses), some with a little--like the cities--"a cosmopolitan city, known for its ancient ruling caste as well as its monstrous buildings", some have none "a mountain". This is a place where I feel like people could really help out--What are some things you'd put in a swamp? A temple? A desert?Today At Sea As described before, it's a slightly modified version of the wavecrawl kit from this blog. It's pretty good, thinks me. But more options would never go amiss--particularly for the sea creatures subtable.Random Humanoid Horde Pretty decent version of the one from this blog. Includes options for the basic races (goblin, gnoll etc.) plus a less likely option for (random animal)man.Fortress Generator From this blog: does its job, I think.Hex Map Key Generates 100 hexes at once. Most are dull on purpose. It's perfectly functional for a lot of things (cut it, paste it, give it numbers matching your hexgrid) but you could easily add more detail at every level if you were so inclined. Also: there are no climate-specific versions of it and the monsters are as yet totally random rather than segregated to make sense (Encounter: a pack of hyenas (two, actually) killing a swarm of bats). In addition, many of the possible locations from the other tables (mansion, etc.) are not integrated into this table.Dungeon Room Ok as a springboard but could use some work: generates 2-5 exits, a room type (mess hall, stable, etc.), an encounter (possibilities: trap, monster, trap+monster, 2 monsters interacting) and the possibility of one other random object ("a grape""a sword").

Every room has an encounter of some kind--unlike the hex generator this is just meant to generate a room that's interesting, not a whole map full of exciting and boring rooms.

This could be improved in a lotta ways if one was so inclined. The monsters, again, are spectacularly random (" a mold (actually several) chasing a quaggoth").Creepy Fantasy Villain Generates 10 results which sound like the kind of "spooky occult phrases" the FBI's COINTELPRO used to include in anonymous letters to Alan Ginsberg and Bob Dylan-- of which about 8 are generally dumb ("The Huntsman of The Wolves " "The Knight of The Infinite Night ") and 2 are awesome ("The Merchant of Failure" "The Oracle of One Thousand Lunacies "). Not terribly complex at this point but probably not a priority.Arabian Nights-Ish Scenario Generator A less complicated prototype of the Fantasy Assignment one I made for Mandy's Al Qadim game. If you're inclined to tinker with this, its main virtue is it draws on abulafia's pretty decent middle-eastern-setting occupation generator.

These are more like utility generators, mostly just providing sub-libraries for other generators to draw on:Exotic Landscape: Cut and pasted straight from this blog ('Cobalt Reach'). Very simple. Could use more options.

Fantasy NPC (Basic) Race, job, gender. This one's pretty thorough, though it'd also be a good place to start if you wanted to make a new version of the generator weighted toward fighting or adventurign NPCs. Right now there as likely to be a barkeep as an archer.Fantasy Person Of Interest A simple, described NPC (race, job, gender) with one or two random things about them. If you want to fuck with this one you could add a few more options for the kinds of details. Like there's no option for, say "Wants to be ruler of ____" or "Despises ____" etc.Fantasy Town (Simpler) this is just a stripped-down version of one that was already on Abulafia. It provided a little too many unconnected details for my taste.Weird Fantasy Monster this includes every monster I personally would wanna use (including, now, all the monsters in the Folio, since I did all those posts dedicated to making those monsters usable to me). There are several other bestiaries on abulafia you could use instead if you want a more general list. Or make your own by cutting and pasting from mine and theirs and any other list you have.

Also there are no monster-by-environment tables yet. Could be very useful.

I also added a ".Weirdsymbol" directory to the "animal" generator which includes all the real-life animals I could think of that were creepy or vicious or symbolic. i.e. no squirrels, but it's got maggots and squids and lions and tigers.

Also of interest:

The Traps generator is ok, but could use a lot more options if you were so inclined and there's no way to generate a specific kind of trap only (magic, rustic, etc.) . Since it can be used to feed so many other generators it'd be neat to add more options, like "touching (randomobject) opens bars freeing (randommonster)" etc.

_________

Tips to make new thingies:

I don't know how you're supposed to make a new table, but I just do a search like "Mermaid Tail Types" then it tells me there aren't any tables named that but I can make one if I want and there's a link and I hit it. then I hit "Edit"...

A bunch of crap goes at the top which I can't type here because blogger automatically turns it into format code but you can swipe the stuff you need from an existing generator--just set "iterations" to "1" if you're new at this.

Then type...

;main1,[Thenyouwritethenameofatablehere]_____________Then you write a word in those brackets that describes your table--Tailtypes or whatever.

then you go below and go:

;Tailtypes1,Big1,Scary1,Funny1,Hilarious1,Gigantic_______

Then write a bunch of crap at the bottom of the table after a break you can swipe from another table...

...and then you're done. You can make it more complicated in lots of ways but if you take a look at some pre-existing tables you can probably figure out how it's done. If you want your table to draw on an existing one you put [Fantasy NPC (Basic).Main] for example in there. If you want to draw on a subtable of one of the existing tables you'd do like [ Fantasy NPC (Basic).Classes] and it should work. Be aware that hitting "enter" to make a new paragraph int he output doesn't work and just ends the thingy--you have to put in line break code--"".

Here's what a finished one looks like:

(some code)

;main1,[Gender] [Race] [Job]

;Gender1,male1,female

;Race60, there's nothing here because this result is just "implied human"10,elven5,dwarven5,halfling5,half-orc5,half-elf1,possibly doppelganger1,possibly not-entirely humanthe numbers aren't all 1's because I've weighted this table

;Job1,metalsmith1,milliner1,silversmith1,tanner1,tinsmith1,trapsmith1,weaponsmith1,architect1,artisan1,bricklayer1,carpenter1,cartwright(etc.)(some more code)

That'd produce a thing saying "Male cartwright" or "Female elven cartwright". If you want it to spit out lots of results you make the "iterations" number higher.

I wonder if there's something you could use to randomly generate those dungeon imagemaps. (not like doing it myself with flickr is hard, it's just more fun to click a button to see what kind of crazy shit it'll throw together.)